Opinion: Mold and other pathogens in medical cannabis

By Gregg Padula, columnist

Thursday

Jan 10, 2019 at 11:30 AM

This is the first of two columns focused on pathogens and cannabis.

“Live or die, but don’t poison everything”

-- Anne Sexton

A lot has been happening in the cannabis industry in recent weeks. The Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) continues to approve final retail sale licenses, while simultaneously shutting down medical dispensaries for illegal mold and pesticide use. As 2018 came to a close, all attention shifted from medical cannabis to the first recreational shops.

This is a tricky industry to cover. The years of bureaucratic delay made it difficult to keep important articles in the forefront of the news.

This is why I’d like to begin this year’s first column by bringing attention back to the very real issue of contaminated cannabis -- a scourge that continues to worsen, and in my opinion, the biggest threat to the health of both medical and recreational cannabis consumers.

In December, two medical cannabis dispensaries were shut down after testing positive for illegal pesticide use. Triple M, owned by M3 Ventures Group, owns the two locations in Mashpee and Plymouth. And, it was less than a year ago that Healthy Pharms, Inc., a medical dispensary in Georgetown, was forced to suspend sales by the Department of Public Health after the pesticide bifenthrin was discovered in a sample batch of its product.

According to the National Institute for Health, “In severe cases of bifenthrin poisoning, it may cause fluid in the lungs and muscle twitching. Bifenthrin can also cause cancer to humans.”

Remember, these are the same products now being sold in legal retail shops -- therefore, it is important we revisit some of the lost news reports from the “pre-recreational” or “medical” era of cannabis in the commonwealth.

In 2017, I wrote a feature article for another company describing my first-hand experience “cleaning” medical cannabis plants while working as a cultivator in the Massachusetts industry in 2015 and 2016. I worked with medical cannabis patients, advocates and employees to offer a rare, detailed look inside an otherwise-hidden world. However, the article was mishandled and eventually unpublished online.

This was by no means a defeat, as continued activism from others close to this cause caught the attention of Wicked Local’s media partner, WCVB News 5, and in April 2018 investigative reporter Kathy Curran sent a patient into four medical cannabis dispensaries to purchase various products for independent testing. Her findings were reported in a piece calle, “What’s in Your Weed?”

From the four dispensaries, three samples came back positive for yeast and mold. One specimen, which was from a medical dispensary recently awarded a license for retail sales, came back with alarming results -- a high level of coliform, indicating a contamination with feces or sewage.

Ironically, the only business to come up negative for mold in Curran’s investigation admitted to having an infestation of powdery mildew and apologized in a thread on Reddit, for treating the contaminated product by soaking it in commercial strength hydrogen peroxide, and knowingly selling it to patients. The company never received a fine nor a warning.

This isn’t just a problem in Massachusetts; it’s a problem for most cannabis grown in massive cultivation facilities.

After a rare fungal infection believed to have been brought on by medical cannabis killed a California man undergoing cancer treatment in 2017, a research team at UC Davis decided to a look into whether soil-borne pathogens might be hiding in medical marijuana samples, and what they found is disturbing.

According to the Sacramento Bee, marijuana gathered from 20 Northern California growers and dispensaries by Steep Hill Labs, a cannabis testing company in Berkeley, was distilled into DNA samples and sent to UC Davis for analysis, which found multiple kinds of bacteria and fungi, some of which are linked to serious lung infections.

There was a "surprisingly" large number of bacteria and mold, said Donald Land, a UC Davis chemistry professor who is chief scientific consultant for Steep Hill Labs. Testing yielded bacteria and fungi known to cause serious infections, especially in patients with compromised immune systems, according to the Bee. Many of those were of the lungs, among them aspergillus, cryptococcus, mucor, Klebsiella pneumoniae, E. coli and Acinetobacter baumannii.

“There’s a misconception by people who think that because it’s from a dispensary, then it must be safe. That’s not the case," UC Davis Dr. Joseph Tuscano told the Bee.

According to Tuscano, patients with compromised immune systems are especially susceptible to infections, usually acquired in their environment or in the hospital. But given the testing results, Tuscano said some of the more-common infections, such as aspergillus, could also be attributed to contaminated medical marijuana.

So, how can you keep yourself safe, since many of the most-dangerous molds can be invisible, or masked, and testing is done for nothing more than show? It comes down to vigilance and communication between members of the cannabis community.

For medical cannabis patients, it is very important that you are aware of what you're purchasing. Dispensary reviews on apps like Leafly or Weedmaps show you what the business wants you to see, as these arenas allow the administrator to delete all negative reviews.

Talk to other patients, do some research -- as new literature is published each day and can easily be found on library shelves and inside any major book supplier. Inexpensive mold test kits are also available for purchase from most online retailers.

My next column will focus on the various strains of pathogenic mold and fungus common in commercial cannabis facilities. I will explore the current treatments being used, and their effect on humans and the environment.

Until the rules catch up with the industry, it’s up to us to keep each other safe and informed. I promise to do my best.

Gregg Padula is an employee of GateHouse Media New England. He has experience in several areas of the cannabis industry, and now serves as an advocate for both patients' and workers’ rights. He can be reached at gpadula@wickedlocal.com.